Design: Prospective randomized controlled trial, approved (now submitted for approval) by the Institutional Review Board. Over a period of 2 years, 300 patients with severe sepsis or septic shock will be randomized to either the currently accepted standard hemodynamic treatment in our ICU or to the standard plus goal-directed therapy according to the Rivers protocol and the SSC guidelines, i.e. including the addition of ScvO2 measurements and consequently derived treatments to achieve ScvO2 ≥70% for the first 6 hours after appearance of sepsis or septic shock in the ICU (Fig. 2).